If you want to be a better business person, coach, consultant or speaker, you’ll follow those four keys. If you want to get better at marketing and selling your services, you’ll follow those four keys.

And if you want to write a book that helps your business, you’ll follow those four keys as well, right?

Well, according to some research done by John Eggen, who’s a publishing and marketing expert, unfortunately most people don’t know or follow these four keys.

John told me that 90% of those who start on the path of writing and publishing a book don’t even finish the book, let alone succeed with it. The book never sees the light of day. And even the ones that do get published only make an average of $12,500 over the lifetime of the author.

And if that isn’t discouraging enough, how about the 81% of people who “want to write a book someday?” How many of them even start? How many die with that book still inside them?

Well, to be precise, it’s a whole lot.

I wrote a book in 2001 called the InfoGuru Marketing Manual. It was self-published and sold a little more than 8,000 copies in both e-book and hard copy format. I earned about $500,000 from that book, and it’s still selling. It also made a huge difference to the success of my business.

But I was lucky.

I couldn’t call it a fluke because I’m a very determined and persistent person. Nevertheless I didn’t follow John’s success principles very closely.

1. Time-Tested System. Not really. But I had written a lot of articles and knew the basics of putting across an idea in writing. I brought together almost everything I knew about marketing into the book, and it actually worked.

2. Get Training. Not at all. Well, only through reading. I read, “Make Your Knowledge Sell” by Monique Harris and Ken Evoy. This was an excellent online e-book that taught me a lot, not only how to write it but how to market it.

3. Get a Team. I wish! I did the majority of it myself. However, I did get a little help with editing, organizing the book, and getting it designed. My typo-catch team were my early readers (and they caught a lot of them!)

4. Get a Coach. Barely. Remember, I like to do things myself. About the closest I had to a coach was a copywriter who helped me with the sales letter for the book. We went over that letter half a dozen times until we were both cross-eyed.

So, I hope you see what I mean when I say I was lucky. I know people who have created e-books that barely sold any copies. And notice that I’ve never taught a course on how to write and publish a book or e-book! (I’ve left that to John.)

It’s confession time.

Even though John has had hundreds of successes at working with people to write and publish their books, I’ve never gone through his program because I like to do things myself. I almost started it once, but never followed through.

And, as a result, my second book never got off the ground. I think I wanted to be lucky a second time and do it myself. But this time I wanted a “legitimate published book.” And because I didn’t have the time-tested systems, the training, the team and the coaching, it just didn’t happen.

Now how about you?

Do you have a book inside you? Have you been thinking about it for years but never even started? Or have you started and got part of the way there but never got it completed? Or perhaps you completed it but it never did much for your business.

The question is, where do you go from here?

Personally I’m interested if his four success principles really apply to writing a book. Does it actually come down to systems? What about talent? What about a lifetime of experience?

And then, why a book in the first place?

John insists that a book is the mostly widely accepted symbol of authority. But even if that’s true, will it really make a difference in my business? Will it help take my business and the businesses of my subscribers to the next level of success?

How exactly does that work?

In addition, what if I write the wrong book; then what? What if it consumes my whole life and business; can I avoid that? What if it takes too much time and money to get it published? And finally, how can I become the next Malcolm Gladwell? Man, I’d really like that! (or would I?)

The More Clients Bottom Line: Don’t die with a book still inside you. Learn how to take what’s inside you using John’s four cornerstones of publishing success and turn it into a book that makes the impact you’ve always wanted to make.

By Robert Middleton of Action Plan Marketing. Please visit Robert’s web site at www.actionplan.com for additional marketing articles and resources on marketing for professional service businesses.